Frank Rousseau

Animation creation pipelines have been largely dominated by proprietary software for ages. Fortunately, for a few years, we assist a shift largely led by Blender on both 2D and 3D animation productions. We'll see in this presentation the main steps needed to build an animation movie (in 2D and 3D), and what it requires in terms of asset and project management. Parallelly, we will see for each aspect what tools can be used and when open-source solutions can be used fully.

We'll first see how Blender covers all the main aspects of a 3D animation movie and how it can be used to achieve 2D animation with Grease Pencil. We'll include Krita in the talk to show that it can be used too to make backgrounds or textures. Then, we'll discuss how OpenPype and Kitsu can be used to cover the asset management aspect (files) and the project management aspect (tasks and deliveries). Finally, we'll talk about the compositing step with Natron. To finish, we'll mention some studios and productions that use Blender on a daily basis to make their movies.

The Animation industry has always been ruled by proprietary software, mainly from Autodesk, Adobe and The Foundry. But recently we noticed a rise of interest in software like Blender or Krita. Alongside them, initiatives like the Academy Software Foundation are popping. Last but not least, more and more studios publish the sources of their in-house software. During this conference, we'll explain how a typical production pipeline works. Then, we'll discuss how open source impacts animation productions and what we can expect for the future. As a conclusion, I'll explain how studios collaborate more together through free and open-source software.